Touting
a number of customer-requested enhancements in the areas of modeling,
visualization, contact, mechanics and performance, Dassault Systèmes began shipping Abaqus 6.10 Extended
Functionality (6.10-EF), the latest update to its unified Finite Element
Analysis (FEA) and multiphysics product suite, from its SIMULIA brand.

Among the modeling and visualization enhancements the 6.10-EF has dramatically
improved support for substructure modeling capabilities. This new capability
allows Abaqus users to more easily create a substructure of a distinct region
in their product, import it into an assembly, recover the results during an
analysis and reuse the substructures in future models, saving significant
modeling time.

Abaqus 6.10-EF also provides new contact
and mechanics capabilities that improve the efficiency and accuracy of
simulating real-world performance of designs, including fluid leakage between 3-D
bodies in contact. For example, uneven pressure applied to a syringe plunger
during use can result in fluid leakage between the rubber seal and barrel.
Support for 3-D pressure penetration loading can now be used with any contact
formulation, allowing for higher-fidelity simulation results.

Other additions to the new release include expansion of the Extended Finite
Element Method (XFEM) in Abaqus, allowing users to predict crack growth due to
low-cycle fatigue such as with thermal analysis of the heating and cooling
phase that occurs in an engine exhaust manifold. This capability can also be
used to accurately predict the durability and damage tolerance of composite
structures with complex failure mechanisms, according to SIMULIA officials.

Abaqus 6.10-EF also keys in on performance enhancements, including a new
scalable, parallel execution capability within the AMS eigensolver, which
significantly accelerates frequency extraction analyses required to study
Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) behavior in vehicles. SIMULIA's four-core
AMS eigensolver is estimated to be 1.5 times faster than competitive
solutions.

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